


Saltwater

by onstraysod



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: M/M, One Shot, Unauthorized skinnydipping, Yet more violations of the Articles, merman au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:54:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22314385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onstraysod/pseuds/onstraysod
Summary: Edward Little is certain the captain's steward is hiding a secret. One cold night in Lancaster Sound, he discovers what it is.
Relationships: Thomas Jopson/Lt Edward Little
Comments: 20
Kudos: 75





	Saltwater

“There’s something strange about the captain’s steward.”

Edward Little grumbled this statement into the upturned collar of his coat, and coming as it did after a solid ten minutes of brooding silence, George Hodgson could not be sure if it were directed at him or at the frosty air of Lancaster Sound.

“Yes, truly,” Hodgson laughed, a cloud of steam exploding from his mouth. “He seems strangely honest and industrious for a steward.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Edward shook his head, scattering the snowflakes clinging to his eyelashes. “Haven’t you noticed…?”

“I’ve noticed that he keeps my glass filled at supper.” Hodgson slapped the first lieutenant on the shoulder. “Relax, Edward. You needn’t always be so vigilant. If there’s danger to be found up here, it will come from the cold and the ice, not from Jopson.”

Perhaps; but Edward was not an imaginative man, and yet he’d experienced things in the presence of Thomas Jopson that he could not explain. Times when the steward spoke and Edward heard the man’s voice as if from a long intervening distance, tinny and oscillating like echoes beneath water. At other times - when the steward bent over his shoulder to refill his ale - Edward’s ears had rung with an audible pressure, the same as one heard in the hollow labyrinth of a seashell. He had seen the steward standing before the windows in the great cabin, a watery aura of shifting blue and silver light outlining his body; had watched across the table in the mess as a sheen of perspiration on Jopson’s brow rippled like tiny fish scales across his brow or cheeks. And once in Baffin Bay, he’d come upon deck in the early morning to find Jopson leaning over the rail, gazing at the blowhole of a black whale swimming beside the ship, his head oddly tilted as if listening to the inaudible noises the creature was making beneath the surface.

He had spoken of these things to no one, at least until he’d blurted out the words to Hodgson. He’d been tempted to unburden himself once to McDonald but had changed his mind at the last minute, worrying that the doctor might see in his confession the signs of some underlying malady. For it was ridiculous, surely; and maybe this was scurvy taking an early hold in him; maybe it was something else that happened in the polar realms, something obliquely hinted at in the accounts of other expeditions, the reason for men being restricted to their cabins for months on end. Yet the impressions would not leave his mind, not during the duties of the day nor afterwards in the long dark hours when he lay in his bunk, troubled by imperfectly remembered dreams of drowning.

So that night, after Hodgson had dismissed his comment with laughter, Edward determined to put all such thoughts aside for good; and if he could not do so with sleep or the written word wandering across a poorly illuminated page, he would do it with movement. Early in the dog watch he rose and, swaddled deep in greatcoat and muffler and mittens, climbed to the deck, to the still air beneath the high, trembling stars. Since the two ships lay at anchor that night, _Erebus_ a few miles off the _Terror_ ’s starboard bow, the usual watches had been suspended and a solitary Marine paced off the steps of his lonely vigil across the forward deck. Edward pulled his coat closer around him and turned towards the stern.

At first he was unsure of what he was seeing. There was a gleam of white at the taffrail like a sliver of fallen moonlight through the gloaming; as Edward stared, it bent and twisted, and he realized that he was looking at a man.

A naked man.

Holding a burning breath in his lungs, Edward crept nearer, placing each step carefully on the deck. The man at the taffrail had just stepped out of his drawers, the last layer of clothing between his flesh and the freezing air; his bare skin glowed smooth and pale as fresh snowfall as he leaned out over the rail, looking down at the water beneath the stern post.

“Jopson.”

The name burst unbidden from Edward’s lips as he watched the steward climb halfway over the taffrail, his intentions unambiguous. In his years of service, Edward had seen three men jump overboard: one to save a man who’d fallen from a yardarm, two to rescue shipmates who’d been swept over the rail in a storm. It was a decision a man made spontaneously, on the edge where one moment melded into the next, life and death in the balance: yet Edward had never seen a man take the time to strip off more than a coat and boots before diving. But he had heard of such things. He’d heard about a midshipman on a frigate in the Channel who’d neatly folded his garments, setting them in a stack on the deck before drowning himself in the cold surf off the Dover cliffs. Jopson’s clothes were strewn messily about the quarterdeck, an uncharacteristic act for the scrupulous steward: was that, like that midshipman’s neatly folded clothes, emblematic of mental distress?

But when Jopson turned at the sound of his name, pinning Edward with eyes that glittered like spear points in the moonlight, his mouth was turned up at both corners. He lifted one hand from the rail, curling his fingers in invitation, before arcing his slender body into a sickle shape that sliced into the icy water without a sound.

Running to the taffrail, Edward searched the black spaces between the floating chunks of ice, waiting for some breach. When the seconds stretched themselves into small eternities, a coldness more than skin deep began to spread outward from his thudding heart. Then, yards further astern than the place where Edward had been looking, the surface of the sea splintered and a head and throat emerged, thrown back and casting off an arc of spray that fell like diamonds through the moonlight. Jopson bobbed there between the fragments of ice for a moment, looking back at Edward leaning out over the rail, then slipped back down into the dark waters.

With frequent trips being made to _Erebus_ , the captain had ordered that their jolly boat be left to bob beside the ship, tethered to the starboard rail. As quietly as possible to avoid waking the Marine sentry - the man now half-stood, half-slumped against the foremast, head bent upon his chest - Edward climbed down the side and into the jolly boat, untying the rope and unshipping the oars. He pulled them through the water with a speed born of despair, each cold inhalation sizzling in his chest, the strain of the movement tearing the muscles in his shoulders. Uncanny, oppressive silence swallowed the jolly boat as it slipped further and further from _Terror_ ’s stern.

By the time _Erebus_ was so distant on _Terror’_ s starboard side as to be nothing but a twinkling star on the horizon, and Edward was too far away from his ship to hear the creak of its timbers and rigging, he let the oars trail in the water, too winded to pull any further. All around him pieces of ice - some as small as dinner plates, others as big as boulders - rotated slowly in imperceptible currents. The reflection of the moon bobbed across the slate-gray waters between them, shattering like a china plate when a tail suddenly breached the surface. It curved, a silver-blue hook barbed with a wide fin at one end, and Edward was caught as surely as if a length of bent metal had been driven into his mouth and out his cheek. The tail slapped the water, spraying mist, and disappeared again into the depths, leaving Edward alone with his longing, the lights of the ships mere pinpricks in the distance.

“Have you come to catch me, Lieutenant Little?”

Gasping, Edward turned to the sound of the voice and found Jopson bobbing some feet from the jolly boat’s port side, his head and pale shoulders the only parts of him visible above the choppy surface. He was smiling, utterly unfazed by the cold water and even colder air. 

“I see no net in your boat,” Jopson continued, “but then again, you snared me long ago with nothing more than your eyes.”

Gripping the gunwale, Edward drew a deep breath, so frigid it was like stabbing himself in the lungs. “Jopson, I order you to return to the ship this minute. This is desertion, and you’re in violation of the Articles.”

“I would imagine, sir, that desertion is the least of my violations.”

Edward sighed, a heavy, defeated sound, filling the air with the white steam of his breath. “I can only deal with this in regard of my duties, Jopson. Nothing in my years of service has prepared me to deal with… whatever it is you are.”

“I’m a steward in Her Majesty’s Navy.”

Edward passed his mittened fingers across his brow. “You have a tail.”

“Among other things.” Jopson glided smoothly through the water, approaching the boat. “I have a tail when I need it, and legs when I need them. The best of both worlds, wouldn’t you say?”

Edward stared at him for a moment, then shook his head slowly. “I must be mad. Or dreaming.”

“You, sir, are the sanest man on _Terror_ , I’d wager. And as for dreaming…” Jopson dove beneath the boat, knocking against the keel as he swam and rocking the little vessel so violently that Edward scrambled to regain his balance inside. Popping up on the opposite side, Jopson laid his arms along the gunwale and smirked. “Does that feel like a dream?”

“There are no such things as mermen,” Edward spat in frustration. Jopson laughed.

“Or Northwest Passages, for that matter. Yet here we are.” He regarded Edward for a moment, his head tilted curiously to one side. “You’re not frightened of me, are you?”

“Should I be?”

“I thought all sailors believed my kind preyed upon them. Lured them into treacherous waters full of hidden rocks and shoals, and drowned them? Made feasts of their corpses in stone grottoes deep beneath the waves?”

Rising a little further out of the water, Jopson reached out slowly and touched a wet hand to Edward’s leg, just above the edge of his boot. “I could leave you stranded out here on some ice floe. Your body wrapped in gold chains I’ve scavenged from shipwrecks on the ocean floor.”

Edward swallowed, but did not pull away from Jopson’s touch. Beneath the moonlight, the steward’s bare arms shimmered in scattered places with patches of small, pale blue scales, and Edward balled his fists in his mittens, overcome with a strange desire to stroke them.

“I don’t believe you’d do that to me.”

He could have sworn he saw a blush overspread Jopson’s cheeks. “You’re right. You understand me too well to believe that.” He drew his hand back, laying it on the edge of the gunwale and resting his chin upon it, and Edward might have felt colder for the removal had Jopson’s large, luminous eyes not been fixed on his face in a way that sent heat surging through his frame. “You know, don’t you, that I want to devour you in a different way.”

“Jopson…” Edward gasped out the name as if he’d been punched in the stomach. 

“I’m already in violation of the Articles,” he continued, smiling mischievously. “In for a penny, in for a pound.” He reached out again, this time laying his hand on the top of Edward’s knee. Cold seawater seeped from his fingers through the wool of Edward’s trousers, but the lieutenant could only feel the warmth and strength of the hand that touched him. “There’s been something between us from the beginning, hasn’t there? A recognition. You suspected there was something different about me.”

Edward couldn’t lift his eyes from the pale hand on his leg. “Not this.”

The hand slid away. When Edward looked up, all Jopson’s previous bravado had faded, replaced by sorrow. “I disgust you.”

“No. No, Thomas.” Edward used the given name unconsciously in his rush to reply; after all, the steward was always Thomas in his thoughts and fantasies. “That’s not true. That could never be true. “I--" The icy air stuck in his throat, choking him. “Yes, I am afraid of you. But not that you’ll harm me. I’m afraid of the way you make me feel. What you make me want. How you might cause me to act in the future.”

New light leapt up in Jopson’s eyes and he reached out again. “I thought a sailor was wedded to his ship,” he said softly, his fingers slipping a few inches beneath the hem of Edward’s greatcoat. “But you’ve left her shelter in the middle of the night for my sake. Does that make me your mistress, do you think?” He wet his lips with the tip of a coral-pink tongue. “Are there other vows you would break for me?”

Edward swallowed. “Every one I’ve ever made.”

Jopson looked at him for a moment, the declaration - said so quickly, with such resolution - seeming to take him by surprise. Then he smiled. “I want to have you in temperate waters, Edward. Bare to my hands. My mouth all over your skin.” As Edward trembled at the import of these words, Jopson braced both hands on the side of the little boat and pulled his body up and over the gunwale, turning as he came so that he slid tail-first into the boat’s bottom. Curling it around, he pulled himself up between Edward’s legs. “But as it’s too cold here to take you in my element, I’ll come to yours.”

Edward’s arms were around him instantly, around the part of him that was all man: strong, solid chest, broad shoulders, hard biceps; and Jopson pulled him down into a kiss that tasted like salt and winter, his wet hands sliding around the back of the lieutenant’s neck, into the thickness of his hair. Edward moaned into the devouring kiss, and tore off his mittens behind Jopson’s back, careless of the cold, needing to lay his bare palms on the steward’s sleek skin. His touch moved over flexed shoulder blades and spine, around to firm pectorals crowned with small, sharp nipples. Jopson’s whimper broke the kiss, and Edward’s mouth found his throat, the curved line of it smooth as a wave.

When his fingers strayed down to Jopson’s flanks, inadvertently brushing a patch of scales, Edward drew back. The sensation was so alien, so different from flesh, that he froze, drawing his hands back to the familiar territory of the steward’s nipples, rubbing them slowly with his thumbs.

“Touch me, Edward,” Jopson whispered into his hair, suckling briefly on the rim of Edward’s ear. “It’s all right. Touch me where you want to touch me.”

Their breaths mingled as clouds of frost, and Edward gazed into eyes that had always reminded him of the finest waters he’d ever sailed, shallow green-blue lagoons in hidden Mediterranean cays where he’d swum naked on hot afternoons. Resting his brow against Jopson’s, he moved his hands down, seeking out a little bundle of scales low on the steward’s stomach, and he passed one finger gently across them. They slipped beneath his flesh like a clear stream, like silk but almost feathery in their delicacy, gossamer and paper-fine. Jopson moaned against his cheek.

Painfully aroused, Edward gathered Jopson in his arms again and lifted the man up into his lap, one hand slipping beneath his tail. His fingers traced along the smooth, interlocking scales, watching the shifting tint of them in the moonlight - teal to silver to sky blue - as Jopson clung to him, arms around his neck, peppering his face and throat with eager kisses. Fascinated, Edward kept touching, stroking, outlining the shell-shape of each scale, as enraptured as a young man fondling his first pair of breasts. 

“You cannot be real.”

Jopson licked into Edward’s mouth. “Do I not feel solid enough beneath your hands?”

“You feel… strange. Wonderful.” He returned Jopson’s kiss, hands roving over a ridge of flexible fin marking what would have been the steward’s arse. His mind reeled with questions of improbable anatomy, his curiosity burning to be satisfied. As if reading thoughts were another of his unique adaptations, Jopson took one of Edward’s hands and drew it to a place beneath his navel, comparable to where heat had gathered to stiffen Edward against his trousers. Edward felt a swell beneath his fingers, and noted that the scales there were aligned differently, as if they might be manually parted to expose the hardness underneath. They were warm to his touch, too, and the brush of his fingers against them made Jopson draw in a sharp breath, then close his eyes against a shiver that spread through his whole body, curling the tips of the fin at the end of his tail. 

“Is that…”

Jopson nodded, his hand covering Edward’s and pressing it more firmly against the bulge. “Your touch… feels so good.” But then he shook his head, pulling Edward’s hand away. “Not here. Too cold. In the water I’d be fine, but you wouldn’t. And now I feel how frozen you are.” He gripped Edward’s hand in both of his, held it against his chest. “Oh Edward, I’ve kept you out here too long. You’re like ice.”

“So you murder me, just as the legends say.” Edward pressed kisses to Jopson’s face and jaw. “It doesn’t matter--"

“It does to me, you fool.” Jopson pushed Edward gently back, placing a hand against his throat. “Your blood is sluggish. Your heartbeat is slow.” There was a note of panic in his rushed words. “I’ve neglected my duties. You must get back to the ship.”

“I’d rather stay here. This seems a good way to die.”

Even as he spoke, Edward was suddenly, sharply conscious of the needle-sharp pain in his hands and cheeks, the violence of the tremors that - with the distraction of Jopson’s mouth and body removed from him - shook him from head to foot.

Giving a little hiss of frustration between his teeth - a sound Edward had heard him make when the tea kettle had yet to come to a boil, or an errant spot had appeared on a piece of silverware - Jopson dove back into the water. The jolly boat gave a shudder and began to cut through the surf, threading between cakes of ice and heading straight for _Terror_ ’s dark silhouette. Before Edward could properly process all that had happened since he’d left the ship he was back at its starboard rail, the jolly boat bumping gently against the hull, and Jopson was no where to be seen.

Half in a dream, Edward secured the boat and struggled up the side, shaking so violently it was difficult to keep feet and hands on the ladder. The Marine sentry was snoring now, huddled limp at the base of the foremast. Glancing towards the stern, Edward noticed that the scattered clothes had disappeared from the deck. A trace of water on the gunwale, fast turning to ice, was the only sign of unusual activity.

Somehow, Edward made it to his cabin without waking anyone, though his teeth were chattering together loudly enough to rouse the whole deck. Still clad in his greatcoat, he only paused to remove his boots before collapsing. He pulled his blankets up to his chin, curled his body inward, but nothing eased the tremors that shook him, and he clamped his jaw shut to stifle the sound of his teeth. Numbness had soaked deep into his flesh, yet he felt violently alive in a way he could never remember having felt before; and, then again, everything seemed unreal, even his body, as if he existed only as a shred of dream. He both could and could not believe what had happened, holding the contradictory positions simultaneously; and he fully expected to wake in the morning to a world where no man was half fish and where Thomas Jopson had never kissed him.

As he lay shivering in a cold fever, he heard the door of his cabin slid open and shut, and soft footfalls approach his bunk. Then a body, blissfully warm and blessedly still, slid beneath the blankets behind him. An arm cradled him, pulling him closer, and puffs of hot breath stirred his hair as a face nuzzled against the back of his neck. He smelled lavender soap and the brine of the sea.

“I had the strangest dream about you.” Edward somehow forced the words out between his snapping teeth.

“If it was a dream, why are you so cold?” And pressing a kiss to the back of Edward’s head, Jopson began rubbing at the lieutenant’s body through his clothes, his hands moving briskly over arm and thigh and chest, working friction into the layers of wool and into his skin. “If it was a dream, then why have I come to your bed?”

“Because I’m still dreaming. I’ve yet to wake.” 

“Silly man.” Jopson continued chafing at Edward’s chest and extremities. “You’re too intelligent to doubt what your own eyes have seen, what your hands have touched.”

Edward twisted around to face Jopson, their noses nearly colliding, and he reached down to touch Jopson’s hip. “How is it you have legs again now, unless I dreamed it all: your tail, your scales, your fins? How is that possible?”

Jopson pressed his lips softly to Edward’s. “Shall I show you?” Edward nodded. His shaking had lessened, his body forgetting the cold as his mind filled with desire. Smiling, Thomas placed another kiss on his brow, then turned and rose from the bunk. “I’ll be right back,” he whispered, and crept silently to the cabin door. 

In his absence, Edward began to tremble again, but this time not from the chill. True to his word, Jopson returned in less than a minute, though to Edward - lying in the darkness, listening to the loud tattoo of his heart - it seemed an hour or more. By the dim lamplight he saw that Jopson was carrying something small and silver in his hand. Setting it down on Edward’s writing table, Jopson took the empty cup from Edward’s evening tea and dipped it into the washbasin. When the cup was filled to the brim with tepid water, Thomas sat it back on the desk and began to undress.

The light was much too weak for Edward’s liking, but all that the shadows obscured was soon laid bare for the inspection of his eyes and hands when Jopson climbed upon him, straddling his thighs. Edward filled his hands with the tender curve of Jopson’s arse, the hard lines of his thigh muscles, the taut stretch of his stomach, too overwhelmed yet to dare touch what he most wished to, satisfied to drink up the sight of it. Stretching to reach the writing desk, Jopson picked up the teacup of water and the silver object he’d brought back to the cabin: the silver salt cellar from the captain’s table. Edward paused in his explorations, watching Jopson in confusion.

“Saltwater.” Thomas stated the word in answer to Edward’s unasked but obvious question. Shaking a measure of salt into the teacup, he swirled the water around, then - holding the cup in his right hand - took one of Edward’s hands in his left and dipped the lieutenant’s fingers into the cup.

Understanding flashed into Edward’s brain like a bolt of lightning to the head. He laid his saltwater-wet fingers against Thomas’s thigh, stroking down the ridge of muscle. As he did, he both saw and felt the eruption of small, paper-soft scales upon Thomas’s skin. Dipping his fingers in the cup again, Edward painted strips of saltwater along the curve of Thomas’s hips, across his lower belly, and - finally, with shaking fingers - along the length of Thomas’s rigid cock. Enraptured and aroused, Edward watched as the scales shimmered with iridescence in the low lamplight, emerging beneath each brush of his fingers like lines drawn in sand.

“Edward.” Thomas moaned the name softly as the throbbing vein on the underside of his cock disappeared beneath violet-blue scales. Breathing rapidly, Edward retraced his path again and again, the sensation of the silken, parchment-fine scales sending waves of hot excitement through his body, obliterating the last vestiges of the cold. Thomas keened and closed his eyes, his head thrown back in a delirium of pleasure, and Edward thirsted to taste him, scales and skin both: to know how each felt sliding beneath his tongue.

“What is the Northwest Passage compared to this?” he marveled, and Thomas laughed softly, leaning down to claim his lips.

“I’m your ocean, Edward,” he whispered. “Lose yourself in me.”


End file.
